Exeter Book Riddle 47

Exeter Book Riddle 47 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records) is one of the most famous of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Its solution is 'book-worm' or 'moth'.

Text

Original	Formal equivalence	Translation
Moððe word fræt. Me þæt þuhte wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn, þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes, þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs wihte þy gleawra, þe he þam wordum swealg.[1]	A moth ate words. To me that seemed a fantastical event, when I found that wonder out, that a worm swallowed certain of men’s word, a thief in darkness, a glorious statement and strong its foundation. The thieving stranger was not a whit more wise that he swallowed those words.	A moth ate words. I thought that was a marvelous fate, that the worm, a thief in the dark, should eat a man's words - a brilliant statement and its foundation is strong. Not a whit the wiser was he for having fattened himself on those words.

Interpretation

The extensive commentary on this riddle is concisely summarised by Cavell,^[2] and more fully by Foys.^[3]

Editions

• Krapp, George Philip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 236.
• Williamson, Craig (ed.), The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977).
• Muir, Bernard J. (ed.), The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000).

References

1. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 205.
2. M. C. Cavell, 'Commentary for Riddle 47', https://theriddleages.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/commentary-for-riddle-47/ (23 November 2015).
3. Martin Foys, 'The Undoing of Exeter Book Riddle 46: "Bookmoth"', working paper at https://www.academia.edu/15399839.